Iris Osterman: A Cliff Walk

The Bowery Gallery will present paintings by Iris Osterman from October 3 – 28, 2017.

With this new body of work Osterman continues her exploration of landscape, this time limiting her subject to one particular place and memory. The work comes out of a trip to Sussex, UK, where she spent a week walking along the South Downs Way known for its striking views of the great chalk cliffs, called the Seven Sisters.

This historic area has long been a favorite of artists, writers, and nature enthusiasts. Views that found Virginia Woolf “overcome by beauty more extravagantly than one could expect.”

Iris Osterman returned from her trip and produced a number of paintings, drawings and prints recalling the experience which comprise her Bowery show, “A Cliff Walk”.

South Downs Way 42 x 48 Oil/Encaustic

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Here is Osterman describing her process:

I use oils, graphite, charcoal and encaustic, to fill the canvases with passages of expansive planes and energetic line.

Headland 42 x 60 Oil

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“Shapes become important, as well as a fierce abbreviated drawing”.

Sailors’ Delight (Sunset At Beachy Head) 30 x 50 Oil/Encaustic

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Toward Eastbourne 42 x 50 Oil/Encaustic

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“The works on paper are part of the evolution and process of the larger pieces, yet they stand alone as a more immediate response. They involve an analytical search for form and movement pared down to essentials”.

Westerly 40 x 50 Oil/Encaustic

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Most of the work was produced in a period of nine months while she says she was “still in a state of wonder”.

There is a precedent for artists who travel to experience new landscapes. For this writer a foremost reason was expressed by one of the group of painters who regularly went from New York to New Mexico in the early part of the 20th century. One painter explained that an artist must sometimes go to a place like the American west to experience expansive sky and land because seeing these big shapes and new forms has a dynamic impact on one’s art. Iris Osterman has proved this to be true with this strong new body of work.

Osterman has shown her work in numerous one-person and group exhibitions in Massachusetts and nationally. Most recently she has shown her work at the Fountain Street Gallery, Boston, and the Cotuit Center for the Arts, Cotuit, MA among others.